Fresh peace bid is being made in the Samajwadi Party by Azam Khan

Lucknow: There is no curtain yet on the melodrama. The last word is yet to be said on the feud in the Mulayam Singh Yadav family which has virtually brought it to the brink of split. And it is senior leader Azam Khan again who has created a new hope of rapprochement between the warring groups.

Azam who had gone to Delhi on Monday to make peace bid again spoke to the patriarch there for a considerable time and is believed to have persuaded him to talk to his chief minister son Akhilesh Yadav and settle the ” disputes”.

The former chief minister is learnt to have agreed and it was for this reason that he airdashed to Lucknow this morning. His brother, Shivpal Singh Yadav, who is his trusted lieutenant in addition to party member of the Rajya Sabha Amar Singh, is likely to reach here sometime in the day.

The main reason for the apparent change of heart, according to insiders, is the fear that the party’s cycle symbol may be frozen by the Election Commission and that the electoral body may allotted different symbols to the warring factions.

Mulayam along with Amar, Shivpal and Jayaprada has already met the Commission and tried to convince it that the party under him was the real Samajwadi Party and that the cycle symbol should not be allotted to the other faction. The group led by Akhilesh was scheduled to meet the agency on Tuesday.

Freezing of old symbol of a party not without precedent . The same thing had happened in 1969 after split in the old Congress . A reminder made the old guard reconsider.

Another reason may be “realisation” that in the tussle between Shivpal and Akhilesh the latter has scored a higher point. Proving his mettle he had brought in more than ninety per cent Assembly members to the meeting called by him.

If some sources are to be believed , even some Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party members, have promised to desert their parties and join hands with him. It is not small achievement by a political novice who appeared on the scene only five years ago.

All this would not have been missed by a seasoned politician like Mulayam who broke away from then Prime Minister Chandrashekhar in 1992 to form Samajwadi Party and chose cycle as its symbol.

Akhilesh may not be averse to peace talk because he has proved whatever he had to prove to his father and others in the party.

Some party insiders saw it coming on last Sunday itself after Mulayam postponed the special party convention called on January 5 and expelled from the party for six years only Ram Gopal Yadav and not Akhilesh who was equally responsible for the meeting called earlier that day.

For Ram Gopal it is not something new. He has been sacked twice before. He may be taken in again under the new compromise formula.